The second book to be released based on The Old Republic MMO game. This novel will be written by Paul S. Kemp (author of Crosscurrent) and will be the sequel to Fatal Alliance. Release date is set for December 29, 2010. This will also be a hardcover.

Click below for the blurb...

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

Deceived tells the story of Darth Malgus and gives fascinating insight into his rise to fame and glory as the Sith Lord who destroyed the Jedi Temple. This stunning narrative finds the dark hero battling a veteran Jedi Master, setting the stage for the affairs and betrayals surrounding the last battle of the Great War before the signing of the Treaty of Coruscant.

According to the TOR site, Deceived will be 256 pages (remember, it's hardcover) and will be priced at $27.00_________________
"I believe toys resonate with us as humans, we can hold them them, it's tactile, real! They are totems for our extended beliefs and imaginations. A fetish for ideas that hold as much interest and passion as old religious relics for some. We display them in our homes. They show who we are. They are signals for similar thinking people. A way we connect with each other...and I guess thats why I do toys. That connection." -Ashley Wood

Last edited by Darth Skuldren on Fri Apr 30, 2010 2:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:25 am

Message

comanderblyMaster

Joined: 29 Feb 2008Posts: 745Location: Denver

Sweet! Wanted to know more about him since the cinematic trailer!!!

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 2:15 pm

Message

VileZeroMaster

Joined: 21 Mar 2010Posts: 816Location: Maryland

Looks like a fantastic addition to the EU. I'm a big fan of Kemp, and he couldn't have picked a better character to focus on.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 2:19 pm

Message

DarthSkywalkerPadawan

Joined: 24 Apr 2010Posts: 33Location: Warren, MI

We finally have a name of the Sith Lord that Destroyed The Jedi Temple Darth Malgus.

I will buy this book, i can't wait.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 2:57 pm

Message

Darth SkuldrenModerator

Joined: 04 Feb 2008Posts: 6580Location: Missouri

Pretty cool bio for Malgus at the TOR site: http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/biographies/darth-malgus_________________
"I believe toys resonate with us as humans, we can hold them them, it's tactile, real! They are totems for our extended beliefs and imaginations. A fetish for ideas that hold as much interest and passion as old religious relics for some. We display them in our homes. They show who we are. They are signals for similar thinking people. A way we connect with each other...and I guess thats why I do toys. That connection." -Ashley Wood

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 3:13 pm

Message

DarthSkywalkerPadawan

Joined: 24 Apr 2010Posts: 33Location: Warren, MI

Looks like Darth Malgus Could be one of the most Powerful Sith Lords of all time.

Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 12:56 pm

Message

Mara Jade SkywalkerAdministrator

Joined: 15 Feb 2008Posts: 5694Location: Beyond Shadows

That is an absolutely amazing cover, one I will be extremely happy to own. Not to mention that it's being written by Kemp, whose Crosscurrent was awesome!

But anyway, here's the excerpt Mr. Kemp himself released recently:

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

Malgus took one last look around, at the children and their parents playing, laughing, eating, everyone going about their lives, unaware that everything was about to change.

“Come,” he said to Eleena, and picked up his pace. His cloak swirled around him. So, too, his anger.

Moments later, he received another coded transmission, this one from the highjacked dropship.

Jump complete. On approach. Arrival in ninety seconds.

Ahead, he saw the four towers surrounding the stacked tiers of the Jedi Temple, its ancient stone as orange as fire in the light of the setting sun. The civilians seemed to give it a wide berth, as if it were a holy place, rather than a place of sacrilege.

He would reduce it to rubble.

He walked toward it and fate walked beside him.

Statues of long-dead Jedi Masters lined the approach to the Temple’s enormous doorway. The setting sun stretched the statue’s tenebrous forms across the duracrete. He walked through the shadows and past them, noting some names: Odan Urr, Ooroo, Arca Jeth.

“You have been deceived,” he whispered to them. “Your time is past.”

Most of the Jedi Order’s current masters were away, either participating in the sham negotiations on Alderaan or protecting Republic interests off planet, but the Temple was not entirely unguarded. Three uniformed Republic soldiers, blaster rifles in hand, stood watchful near the doors. He sensed two more on a high ledge to his left.

Eleena tensed beside him, but she did not falter.

He checked his chrono again. Fifty-three seconds.

The three soldiers, wary, watched him and Eleena approach. One of them spoke into a wrist comlink, perhaps querying a command center within.

They would not know what to make of Malgus. Despite the war, they felt safe in their enclave in the center of the Republic. He would teach them otherwise.

He let his anger build with each step he took toward the Temple’s entrance. The Force responded to his emotional state, caught him up in its power until he was awash in it. He sensed the seed of fear growing in the soldiers’ guts.

“I said stop,” the lead soldier said again.

“Do nothing,” Malgus said to Eleena over his shoulder. “These are mine.”

She let her hands fall slack to her sides and fell in behind him.

The three guards spread out into an arc as they approached him, their movements cautious, blaster rifles ready. The entrance to the Temple, a fifteen-meter-tall vertical slit in the edifice’s facade, loomed behind them.

“Who are you?” the guard asked.

The last word hung in the air, frozen in time, as Malgus drew on the Force and augmented his speed. The hilt of his lightsaber filled his hand and its red line split the air. He crosscut the guard before him, putting a black canyon in his chest, continued the swing through the the guard on his left, killing him, and with his left hand used a blast of power to drive the third guard into the Temple wall hard enough to kill him.

Malgus felt the sudden surge of terror in the two soldiers up on the ledge to his left, felt them take aim in sweaty hands, start to squeeze triggers. He flung his lightsaber at them, guided it with the Force in a flickering red arc that cut both of them down, then recalled the blade to his hand. He deactivated it and hung it from his belt.

The roar of a rocket pack drew his attention. On a ledge above the Temple’s entrance, The Mandalorian rode the fire on her back to a high window on one of the Temple’s upper tiers and disappeared within. He trusted that she would join him for the combat inside.

He checked his chrono, watched the numbers evaporate. Twenty-nine seconds.

Eleena took station to his right and they entered the Temple.

The setting sun at their back reached through the huge doorway and extended their shadows before them, giant, dark heralds marking the path ahead. Within the Temple was a stillness, a peace soon to be shattered.

Malgus’s boots rapped against the polished stone floor. The hall extended before them for several hundred meters. Two rows of elegant columns reached from floor to ceiling on either side of the hall, framing a processional down the hall’s center. Ledges and balconies, too, lined both sides of the hall.

Malgus felt the presence of more guards and Jedi to his right, his left, and before him.

He checked his chronocomm. Twelve seconds.

Motion above and to his right, then to the left, drew his eyes. Curious Padawans looked down from the ledges above.

Ahead, a half-dozen robed and hooded Jedi dropped from the balconies and took station in the hall. Another Jedi descended the grand staircase at the end of the hall. His Force signature radiated power, confidence–a Master.

As one, the seven Jedi moved toward Malgus and Eleena and Malgus and Eleena moved toward them.

More and more Padawans gathered on the balconies and walkways above, sparks of light-side blasphemy flickering in Malgus’s perception.

The more powerful Force signatures of the approaching Jedi pressed against Malgus, and his against theirs, the power of each distorting the other by its presence.

In his mind, the countdown continued.

The space between him and Jedi diminished.

The power within him grew.

They stopped at two meters. The Jedi Master threw back his hood to reveal blonde hair graying at the Temples, a handsome, ruddy face. Malgus knew his name from his intelligence briefings — Master Ven Zallow.

In appearance, Zallow was everything Malgus — with his pale skin, scars, and hairless pate — was not. With respect to the Force, Malgus was everything Zallow was not.

The six Jedi Knights accompanying Zallow spaced themselves around Malgus and Eleena, to minimize maneuvering room. The Jedi eyed him cautiously, the way they might a trapped predator.

Eleena put her back to Malgus’s. Malgus felt her breathing, deep and regular.

Silence ruled the hall.

Somewhere, a Padawan cleared his throat. Another coughed.

Zallow and Malgus stared into each other’s eyes but exchanged no words. None were necessary. Both knew what would unfold next, what must unfold.

The chrono on Malgus’s wrist began to beep. The slight sound rang out like an explosion in the silent vastness of the hall.

The sound seemed to free the Jedi to act. Half a dozen green and blue lines pierced the dimness as all of the Jedi Knights ignited their lightsabers, backed off a step, and assumed a fighting stance.

All except Zallow, who held his ground before Malgus. Malgus credited him for it and inclined his head in a show of respect.

Perhaps the Knights thought the beeping chrono indicated a bomb of some kind. In a way, Malgus supposed, it did.

From behind, another sound broke the silence. The whine of the highjacked dropship’s approaching engines.

Malgus did not turn. Instead, he watched the events behind him by watching the events before him.

The Jedi Knights stepped back another step, looking past Malgus, uncertainty in their expressions. Eleena pressed her back against Malgus. No doubt she could see the dropship by now as it roared downward, toward the Temple.

Zallow did not step back and his eyes stayed on Malgus.

The sound of the dropship’s engines grew louder, more acute, a prolonged, mechanical scream.

Malgus watched the eyes ofthe Knights widen, heard the shouts of alarm from throughout the hall, then the screams, all of them soon overwhelmed by the roar of the reinforced dropship slamming at speed into the front of the Temple.

Stone shattered and the Temple’s floor vibrated under the impact. Metal bent, twisted, and shrieked. People, too, bent, twisted, and shrieked. The explosion colored the hall in orange – Malgus could see it reflected in Zallow’s eyes – and the sudden flames drew the oxygen toward it in a powerful wind, as if the conflagration were a great pair of lungs drawing breath.

Malgus did not turn. He had seen the attack thousands of times on computer models and knew exactly what was happening from the sounds he heard.

The dropship skidded closer, closer, the sound of metal grinding over stone ever louder in Malgus’s ears. More columns collapsed. Eleena pressed against him as the flaming, shredded ship slid toward them. But it was already losing speed and soon came to a halt.

Malgus heard the explosive bolts on the specially reinforced passenger compartment of the dropship blow outward and hit the floor like metal rain, heard the hatch clang to the floor.

For the first time, Zallow looked past Malgus, his head cocked in a question. Uncertainty entered his expression. Malgus savored it.

A prolonged, irregular hum sounded, as the fifty Sith warriors within the dropship’s compartment activated their lightsabers. The sound heralded the fall of the Temple, the fall of Coruscant, the fall of the Republic.

Malgus flashed on the vision he’d seen on Korriban, of a galaxy in flames. He threw back his hood, smiled, and activated his lightsaber.

_________________
"It's not about the legacy you leave, it's about the life you live." ~Mara Jade Skywalker

Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 1:43 pm

Message

Old Master BenAdministrator

Joined: 10 Nov 2007Posts: 2259Location: Georgia

I am very excited for this book. Probably the most since Mindor. I think the awesome trailers involving Malgus have really intrigued me. I can't wait to learn more about his character.

Heck, I even asked for the advanced copy on this one, even though I'm not on the review podcast. I want to read it!

Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 2:04 pm

Message

comanderblyMaster

Joined: 29 Feb 2008Posts: 745Location: Denver

I am also excited. I wish they could make trailers for all the books!

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:59 am

Message

comanderblyMaster

Joined: 29 Feb 2008Posts: 745Location: Denver

I just finished Deceived last night. My first reaction is wow, and my second reaction is that this is one of the few books I can remember where I was deeply invested in all the main characters.

More spoilery stuff below:

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

Malgus was everything he appeared to be in the TOR trailer. I really enjoyed his perspective on the darkside and his willingness to follow both the force and his own personal desires. Many Sith back down to their desire in the face of power. They are willing to toss aside anything that gets in their way without a moments thought or concern. Its also a lesson many Sith learn through betrayal. Malgus seems content for a period of time to live with his 'weakness'. Until he realizes his weakness could be his defeat and deny him his vision of a galaxy in flames.

Z-man and Arryn are also strong characters. All three are struggling with their 'weakness'. As a father I identified most with Z-man. I was hoping the book would end with all three characters getting what they wanted. Each had to give something up to get there, but overall it was a great outcome in my opinion. Arryn had to let go of her hate, Z-man had to give up a piece of his soul, and Malgus had to give up his love.

I really want the next story of Malgus to be written. I hope this is not the end of him.

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:53 pm

Message

Darth SkuldrenModerator

Joined: 04 Feb 2008Posts: 6580Location: Missouri

Good observations Bly.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

I hadn't thought about each character having to give up something, but you're completely right. I thought the decisions the characters had to make at the end of the book worked out really well. By then I was deeply connected with each of them, so I felt the full impact. It really amped up the book. Up until then, it was a fun, enjoyable book, but the last part elevated it to something better than average.

For me, Malgus was the highlight. I really enjoyed how the Temple scene played out. I was worried that since we already had a video of it, that the scenes wouldn't be up to par, but Kemp managed to make the event even better than the video (and that video was awesome). Malgus' relationship with Eleena was pretty deep and moving. I thought the whole thing worked out very well, even his eventual sacrifice of her. It was the most Sith like thing he did in the whole book, and yet it was not cheesy at all. It was very well done. I only wish Jacen could have been done so well in LOTF.

The other character were also enjoyable and I like how Z-man turned out. He had to make a rough choice, but it was something he could deal with. Had he left Vrath alive, it surely would have came back on him one way or another. The info Vrath had was too valuable to be left alone.

And in the Q&A Kemp did on Facebook the other day, it sounds like Jaden Korr might be related to Zeerid Korr and we might find out in Riptide. Plus Riptide is going to have new Sith, so I'm stoked.

_________________
"I believe toys resonate with us as humans, we can hold them them, it's tactile, real! They are totems for our extended beliefs and imaginations. A fetish for ideas that hold as much interest and passion as old religious relics for some. We display them in our homes. They show who we are. They are signals for similar thinking people. A way we connect with each other...and I guess thats why I do toys. That connection." -Ashley Wood

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 1:33 pm

Message

comanderblyMaster

Joined: 29 Feb 2008Posts: 745Location: Denver

Darth Skuldren wrote:

Good observations Bly.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

I hadn't thought about each character having to give up something, but you're completely right. I thought the decisions the characters had to make at the end of the book worked out really well. By then I was deeply connected with each of them, so I felt the full impact. It really amped up the book. Up until then, it was a fun, enjoyable book, but the last part elevated it to something better than average.

For me, Malgus was the highlight. I really enjoyed how the Temple scene played out. I was worried that since we already had a video of it, that the scenes wouldn't be up to par, but Kemp managed to make the event even better than the video (and that video was awesome). Malgus' relationship with Eleena was pretty deep and moving. I thought the whole thing worked out very well, even his eventual sacrifice of her. It was the most Sith like thing he did in the whole book, and yet it was not cheesy at all. It was very well done. I only wish Jacen could have been done so well in LOTF.

The other character were also enjoyable and I like how Z-man turned out. He had to make a rough choice, but it was something he could deal with. Had he left Vrath alive, it surely would have came back on him one way or another. The info Vrath had was too valuable to be left alone.

And in the Q&A Kemp did on Facebook the other day, it sounds like Jaden Korr might be related to Zeerid Korr and we might find out in Riptide. Plus Riptide is going to have new Sith, so I'm stoked.

Interesting...

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

I thought Z-man might be related to Korr or at the very least a shout out to Crosscurrent/Riptide. I agree that Malgus was the strongest story piece. I expected Arryn or Z-man to have to sacrifice oneself to save the other. I was thrilled that Malgus chose to honor her sparing Eleena and letting Z-man get away. A story with Malgus in the Unknown Regions after this book would be fantastic.

Z-man's choice seemed very harsh, but it worked much better than having him just kill Vrath during the fight. Still it was justified, Vrath may not have directly gone after his daughter, but like you said the information was valuable.

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:42 pm

Message

Darth SkuldrenModerator

Joined: 04 Feb 2008Posts: 6580Location: Missouri

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

I wonder what they're going to do with Malgus. They've set him up to take down the Sith and the Jedi. Is he going to create a splinter faction in the game? Will they tie the rumors of Revan into this? And is Drew K.'s next TOR book going to feature a Revan-Malgus duo?

I can dream at least.

_________________
"I believe toys resonate with us as humans, we can hold them them, it's tactile, real! They are totems for our extended beliefs and imaginations. A fetish for ideas that hold as much interest and passion as old religious relics for some. We display them in our homes. They show who we are. They are signals for similar thinking people. A way we connect with each other...and I guess thats why I do toys. That connection." -Ashley Wood

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:51 pm

Message

comanderblyMaster

Joined: 29 Feb 2008Posts: 745Location: Denver

Darth Skuldren wrote:

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

I wonder what they're going to do with Malgus. They've set him up to take down the Sith and the Jedi. Is he going to create a splinter faction in the game? Will they tie the rumors of Revan into this? And is Drew K.'s next TOR book going to feature a Revan-Malgus duo?

I can dream at least.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

All good options for sure. I think his move would be to unseat the Emperor. He felt conflict was central to understanding the force and that peace brought weakness. Malgus does not appear to favor politics so I would guess he needs someone to help him achieve that goal. He still needs go after Darth Angral too.

I would like to see Kemp be the guy writing Malgus. Not that I think Drew K. would do a bad job, just that Kemp did it so well.

Revan and Malgus would be great pairing but I would like to see Malgus developed a bit more.

So I discovered that the Work FRAK was removed from the ARC_ here I was super excited- any of you find ONE word of FRAK? I hear one might have been missed? They tried to keep it out of SW after all! And here I was STOKED to see it's addition to the foul language roster!_________________-Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn. None shall pass.
-
-To become a Jedi, it is not the Force one must learn to control but oneself.
-
-Podcasts: Star Wars Beyond the Films, The Star Wars Report, & EUCast